1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the distribution of media content. More particularly, the present invention relates to the computer mediated distribution of digital media content.
2. Background Art
Setting aside for a moment the legal and ethical implications of unrestricted content sharing, the nearly unprecedented popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications such as Napster, Grokster, and BitTorrent is testimony to the public's desire to engage in content sharing. A cynical interpretation of such a broad based enthusiasm may lead to the conclusion that the content sharing behavior has been so popular because it was titillatingly illicit, resulted in the acquisition of creative content for free, or for both of those reasons. In retrospect, however, it may be that rather than, or at least in addition to the less admirable motivations often attributed to it, the immediate popularity of file-sharing was a harbinger of the more recent popularity of the Internet based social networking applications that have revolutionalized the way that people, particularly young people, communicate and remain in contact with one another in this increasingly globalized and computer mediated age.
Almost anyone who uses personal email, for example, is probably by now familiar with the joys and aggravations flowing from the speed and ease with which large amounts of content can be distributed by almost anyone else. The slideshow of photographs taken during a recent vacation by a friend or neighbor, once the bane of the occasional visit to so-and-so's home, is now almost unavoidable due to its nearly limitless potential for replication and distribution as digital media content. More enjoyably, that geographically distant but emotionally significant birthday celebration or family event that we just couldn't arrange to attend in person, is now something that we can experience as a result, for instance, of viewing an audio-visual recording of the event, distributed, again, as digital media content.
P2P file-sharing, social networking applications, email, and public outlets such as YouTube for providing widespread access to personally produced content, all of these are manifestations of the profound way in which personal computing devices and network connectivity have extended the traditional definitions of community and of social interaction. But a natural tension arises when the basic impulse to share the content that we enjoy with our friends begins to conflict with the legitimate economic interests of the creators and producers of commercial content in protecting their potentially valuable intellectual property rights.
As a somewhat archaic but hopefully illustrative example of how advances in computer and network technologies make it both easier and more challenging to appropriately share protected content, consider the old fashioned vinyl 33⅓ rpm long play (LP) record of a nearly bygone era. In those days, when the state-of-the-art in music content distribution was vinyl records, our friends were likely to live close by. When we, or one of our friends, got a new record album, a common act of friendship and shared enjoyment was to listen together to one or more of the songs. In that environment, “sharing” had its purest and most literal meaning, because in order to share the content corresponding to a recorded song, we either had to share the experience in common, i.e., listen to the record together, or we had to temporarily exchange possession of the content, e.g., I lend the record to my friend and concurrently dispossess myself of it for the period of the loan. As a result, the interests of the person wanting to “share” the content with a friend, and the intellectual property interests of the creators and producers of the content in regulating unauthorized use of the content, were naturally aligned.
Today, however, due in part to the extended communities made possible by our Internet based social networks, the friends with whom we may want to share an experience can include individuals in far flung locations. In addition, the creative content we now consume is likely to be in the form of digital media files, which are not only readily transferable over communication networks, but are just as readily reproduced, in whole or in part, and redistributed using our personal computers and the networks supporting our communications with our friends. Consequently, while advances in technology make it easier to make and maintain friendships over long distances, and to reproduce and distribute meaningful content for others to enjoy, those advances have not replicated the experience of sharing content in its traditional sense. That is to say, “sharing” in its modern incarnation as file-sharing, for example, is not really sharing at all, because it does not require me to relinquish the ability to access an item of content in order to make that content available for the exclusive use of another.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing a solution for allocating access to digital media content in a manner that both promotes shared enjoyment of creative content in its traditional sense, and protects the valid commercial interests of content creators and producers.